Tag: Alphabet Sonnet Sequence

Sonnet M

May 11th, 2023

The inheritance of that dark lady is absence,

Her gifts unwrapped to an empty box;

What comfort she offered her bed did mock–

Her explanation followed as silence.

That maps that she traced shaped emptiness,

The promises she whispered were balked;

The doors that she had opened remained locked–

The medicine she offered was sickness.

What is there from before that can explain?

That she stopped swimming? That she let a tide pull

Her into those dark waters, to be twain

On her return, a creature beyond law

Bound by paired desires, beauty not yet flawed,

Like some two-skinned ocean myth, to land chained?
Sonnet J

April 13th, 2023

During the Loma Prieta Earthquake

I stood on a lumpen football field;

We turned south at the sound as the earth reeled

And bucked, swells of earth surged as if to break

On our grassy shore, then rolled on to shake

Down that stilted freeway, make buildings kneel

Among their ruin, bowed to gravity.

Only light poles bobbed and lifted to rake

The placid air on either side of us,

Slowing as the quake spread, leaving our world whole

By incidence of time and space; the thrust

Of earth’s lid on which we were scattered dust

Shocked us giddy, innocent of the toll

Miles on, still sure of our lives, held in trust.
Sonnet I

March 9th, 2023

Someday you will ask, How did I get here?

Someday you will think, who is this person

I am bound to? How has our shared season

Passed? To memory’s hand, it still seems near.

Someday you will wonder if memory’s

Tale spoke truth while knowing it cannot

Except like an old photograph’s frozen

Moment upon which you built your story.

Someday you will admit your story’s false,

Gaps stutter white, like an old film reel

Badly spliced, blankly transmitting what’s lost:

An evening, irregular waves pulse,

Beach fire, standing in an uneven wheel–

Friends’ former faces bead the dark mind’s vault.
Sonnet H

February 21st, 2023

Spring jumped the gun, but I’m stuck in the past,

My alternative to this fast-forward

Meltdown. Down the hall my kid clicks toward

His next target as incoming shells blast

A pocky, pixelated landscape, last

Century’s nightmare now live-action chessboard

For first-person shooters, life by the sword

Recast: shot dead, he respawns. Contrast

To those white eggs we found after a round

Of false-promise spring warmth, then a snap frost

Recast the pond in ice, stilled the life bound

In those two orbs, pushed from the nest to crown

Our wall, fractured monument to what could

Have been, the world now strange, the seasons lost.
Sonnet E

January 13th, 2023

Yes, given a chance it would all come back–

Needing only us to leave it alone,

That scab of wildfire, that dead and burned zone,

Let the wind breath seeds across ashen wrack;

Let the clouds drag their skirts beyond the track

of pavement, over the mountains’ backbones;

Let the sun’s yeasty power wake what was thrown

Down to ruin: cone-seeded, rising plaque

Of mossy green would film the riven slopes.

In time-lapse minutes, a mere human life’s

Run, emerald promise, renewal’s hope.

But what myth do we turn to now to cope

When rain melts hills like fire burns away wax,

Or no rain, nor gods turning their backs?

Tag: Alphabet Sonnet Sequence

Sonnet M

Sonnet J

Sonnet I

Sonnet H

Sonnet E